Gullivers Travels: Books 3&4

Summary: Analyzes books three and four of Jonathan Swift's `Gulliver's Travels.' Describes the main targets of Swift's satire and explains what satiric techniques he employs and how his satire relates to the era in which he wrote.

Satire is a literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, sarcasm or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice or stupidity. Gulliver's Travels was actually written as a pastiche of travel writing, which was popular during Swift's era. Swift uses Daniel Defoe's `Robinson Crusoe' as a model, because this text acts as a mask to a real account of a traveler's experiences. In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift has different targets of his satire. In Book Three, his main satiric targets include the worship of science and academics and his target also includes the Royal Society. To mock the Royal Society, Swift uses mockery and exaggeration. A few examples of what he mocks the Royal Society for are the pointless, misguided experiments that they made. He mentions a few, including the facts of making fire malleable, making food from human waste...